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Although robotic applications increasingly demand versatile and dynamic object handling, most existing techniques are predominantly focused on grasp-based manipulation, limiting their applicability in non-prehensile tasks. To address this…
We consider decentralized optimization problems in which a number of agents collaborate to minimize the average of their local functions by exchanging over an underlying communication graph. Specifically, we place ourselves in an…
The objective of this study is to enable fast and safe manipulation tasks in home environments. Specifically, we aim to develop a system that can recognize its surroundings and identify target objects while in motion, enabling it to plan…
Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) are being routinely applied for a variety of optimization tasks, and real-parameter optimization in the presence of constraints is one such important area. During constrained optimization EAs often create…
Recent advancements in robotics have transformed industries such as manufacturing, logistics, surgery, and planetary exploration. A key challenge is developing efficient motion planning algorithms that allow robots to navigate complex…
The problem of optimal motion planing and control is fundamental in robotics. However, this problem is intractable for continuous-time stochastic systems in general and the solution is difficult to approximate if non-instantaneous nonlinear…
Humans excel in grasping and manipulating objects because of their life-long experience and knowledge about the 3D shape and weight distribution of objects. However, the lack of such intuition in robots makes robotic grasping an…
Almost all neural computations involve making predictions. Whether an organism is trying to catch prey, avoid predators, or simply move through a complex environment, the data it collects through its senses can guide its actions only to the…
Chance constraints are frequently used to limit the probability of constraint violations in real-world optimization problems where the constraints involve stochastic components. We study chance-constrained submodular optimization problems,…
We address an optimal reachability problem for a planar manipulator in a constrained environment. After introducing the optmization problem in full generality, we practically embed the geometry of the workspace in the problem, by…
We introduce the pushy random walk, where a walker can push multiple obstacles, thereby penetrating large distances in environments with finite obstacle density. This process provides a minimal model for experimentally observed interactions…
In robot manipulation, planning the motion of a robot manipulator to grasp an object is a fundamental problem. A manipulation planner needs to generate a trajectory of the manipulator arm to avoid obstacles in the environment and plan an…
We focus on push-based multi-object rearrangement planning using a nonholonomically constrained mobile robot. The simultaneous geometric, kinematic, and physics constraints make this problem especially challenging. Prior work on…
Robotic manipulation research has investigated contact-rich problems and strategies that require robots to intentionally collide with their environment, to accomplish tasks that cannot be handled by traditional collision-free solutions. By…
Real-world manipulation problems in heavy clutter require robots to reason about potential contacts with objects in the environment. We focus on pick-and-place style tasks to retrieve a target object from a shelf where some `movable'…
Sampling-based planning is the predominant paradigm for motion planning in robotics. Most sampling-based planners use a global random sampling scheme to guarantee probabilistic completeness. However, most schemes are often inefficient as…
The kinetics of a variety of transport-controlled processes can be reduced to the problem of determining the mean time needed to arrive at a given location for the first time, the so called mean first passage time (MFPT) problem. The…
Robotic manipulation of flexible objects is widely required in both industrial and service applications. Among such objects, paper-like materials exhibit distinct mechanical characteristics compared to cloth, being more sensitive to…
In recent years, there has been a significant effort dedicated to developing efficient, robust, and general human-to-robot handover systems. However, the area of flexible handover in the context of complex and continuous objects' motion…
We propose a planning and control approach to physics-based manipulation. The key feature of the algorithm is that it can adapt to the accuracy requirements of a task, by slowing down and generating `careful' motion when the task requires…